Expropriating 10% of private company shares for a combination of workers and the state was pretty damn radical for a western democracy! Terrible policy too.
Keir Starmer Labour Leader
- Thread starter Damien
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I think he's trying to revive some core electoral assets - eg crime, education -both areas of Tory weakness and recent labour strengths (and I don't know why these concerns are "right wing").
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Add on spending £350 billion on nationalisations.
They were basically taking the policy from the 1970's Swedish labour movement.
Good job the short-lived Swedish experiment wasn’t a complete disaster. Oh wait…
1. So cool we agree it wasn't some radical proposal then.
2. It was never fully implemented. At best what was put forward was a water down version(Meidner who the plan was named after said the final product was “a pathetic rat'')and the funds where later privatised.
It was about as radical a proposal as they come.
If you want to call the 1970's Swedish labour movement as radical as they come then ok whatever I guess. Even the labour proposal was water down version of the Swedish policy. If people really think workers and the state owning parts of companies is some beyond the pale radicalism, then feck knows how we are going to deal with climate change in any progressive/left way. Which will need at the very least massive state intervention and curbing of the market.
Although maybe owning ''the left'' while the world burns is good enough for some.
Workers and the state can (and already do) fully or part-own many companies. But they can't just steal them.
The UK government is currently actively taking stakes in many companies: https://www.ft.com/content/aa3dc07d-410e-4162-b9d0-f5f57cd9dc21
Yeah I'm a socialist so we aren't going to agree on this.
Yeah, and I think that path is the road to ruin and even further electoral losses, but there's not much to be gained from re-hashing that.
To be fair, credit to you for openly admitting that you see Starmer's primary job as being a cleaner, to take the party away from the grass roots and back under the control of the managerial party establishment. Of course we differ on whether that has any chance of succeeding, but at least you don't pretend that Starmer is some amazing leader who would have been destined to become PM if it wasn't for those noisy Corbynites.
His primary job is to win elections but I am realistic about the hole labour is in and he may well be doomed to play the Kinnock role of making labour broadly electable. The best hope may be for a hung parliament. Whoever does eventually win though is more likely to be from the starmer tradition than the Corbyn one.
Fair enough, I don't think it's worth re-litigating whether democratic socialism or social democracy will be more electorally successful than centrism because I don't think there's much that hasn't already been said.
One thing I do want to ask though... would you agree that if he does want to continue on the current course, then he should seek a mandate for it from the members? He was elected on his famous ten pledges which he's broken on an almost daily basis. Even if you agree that the people he's surrounding himself with and his managerial professional labour party is ultimately the right path, don't you think he should present that to the party members and seek that as a mandate?
I think that's what boils so much piss among Labour members about Starmer - he won a resounding victory in the leadership elections on a platform which he's now entirely abandoned.
It's a shame Starmer didn't oppose the spycops bill.
"Green activist tricked into sexual relationship with spy wins landmark case against Met Police
Tribunal concludes Kate Wilson’s human rights were breached"
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/kate-wilson-mark-kennedy-met-b1929924.html
"Green activist tricked into sexual relationship with spy wins landmark case against Met Police
Tribunal concludes Kate Wilson’s human rights were breached"
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/kate-wilson-mark-kennedy-met-b1929924.html
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you're old and out of touch with your systematic nationalisation.
spending 3.5T, a bunch of which will go to existing private companies, is the new radicalism.
Why is that his profile picture now? 
Not at all. Just turned 71.
Now, why do you ask?
You say right wing.
I would describe it as a move toward the centre. But definitely not right wing.
OK, so compared with the rightward drift of privatisation and individualism for the last 50+ years the process goes against the grain and may seem slightly revolutionary, but in terms of its effect on social mobility and the wealth gap it's not revlotionary at all and would only undo a tiny fraction of the damage the last half century has done.
And considering the stats in hand I don't consider the aspirations in that policy are anything but par for the course for even a centre left party, never mind revolutionary.
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Which just basically increases the speed of the shift to the right. You need a left wing voice, especially if the Tory party are the dominant voice. Labour moving to the centre is Britain racing to the right.
Just curious, I have to admit I thought you'd be younger. I saw Corbyn as the post Blair remedy the party needed, and Starmer is the choice to appease the Blairites or right wing of the labour party as sectrions of the media call them.
I'm all for wanting to build an asset owning democracy, with workers having representation on company boards and more people participating in equity ownership rather than tying up a stupidly high percentage of their net worth in property. Seriously, that would be great for the country! It's how you go about it that matters - with the right balance of incentives, I think it could be done without causing (too much) capital flight, collapsed business investment, and ensuing trade wars that the Corbyn policy would have almost certainly triggered.
Yeah, I'm just so increasingly frustrated these days that I'm probably willing to back anything that will cause a shift.
IMO this is one of the main reasons those on the far left (or right) of an ideological system will never gain power, because they appear to the general public as some form of 'crusaders' and there have been enough of them in our history already.
End of history aspiration... well everyday does bring us closer!!! Extinction Rebellion would have us believe its just around the corner... maybe it is time for some aspirations of that type?
I agree, dialogue across the spectrum would be preferable, but its only those willing to enter into meaningful dialogue who truly believe, those who are rooted in dogma (again left or right) will never agree... its their way or the highway (to coin a phrase).
It's not about gaining power though, it's about doing what's best, or it should be. Adam Smith and Marx were both initially moral philosophers. And in terms of progressive ideas and thought, a static middle ground is infertile. The centre might be the best place to end up, but for it not to stagnate you need ideological discussion from both sides.
The idea that people with radical views can't engage is nonsense. It's the people who just adopt centrist views with no ideological knowledge that can't engage, because they have no ideological knowledge.
The idea that people with radical views can't engage is nonsense. It's the people who just adopt centrist views with no ideological knowledge that can't engage, because they have no ideological knowledge.
I didn't mean the end of the world, I was referring to Francis Fukuyama's declaration at the fall of the Berlin Wall.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Last_Man
Very strange thing to claim, given just how many times both the far left and the far right have gained power throughout history. This smacks of 'the end of history' silliness.
It was in the context of, and I was referring to, the UK in modern times; not to the rest of the world, or ever in history. Clearly might is right has won out whether you would refer to right or left tyranny, it is what it is!
Sorry! misunderstood
I think you are overlooking the amount of regimes voted into power on non centrist platforms outside of the realms of Western Capitalism (which is arguably the great example of might is right)
I must have missed something. When did Corbyn or his party ever suggest revolution? He's a parliamentarian, he's literally the definition of a democratic socialist.
Seems to me so much of labours problems are down to selecting leaders based on what the party needs rather than what voters want.
I would agree with that 100℅.
I can understand that but part of the problem is what members want isnt always what's best for the partys electoral prospects. Party management is a dirty business, always has been for any party as far as I can tell.
The internal politics of the Labour party are tedious, but that's really not unusual for the left, which is one of the main reasons the left is struggling in this Twitter age. Isms and schisms abound, while it seems all the right need is a populist and often empty slogan to mobilise. It's so bloody frustrating.
The only way to defeat the terrible Tories is for the Labour supporters to unite in order to vote Boris out.
To be honest, I find these type of factions self defeating.
Any political party is by definition going to have a range of preferences.
But as far as I am concerned, Labour is Labour. And that is good enough for me.
I thought you'd say that.
In your eyes, party democracy can be ignored or sidelined if the end goal is a public facing party you would consider to me more electable.
Leaving aside the fact that I don't really see any evidence of a centrist party being more electable (as we will go round in circles debating hypotheticals on that forever), my main problem with that view is that it's a slippery slope.
You sideline the CLPs you don't agree with to push through an unpopular policy platform; you change the leadership rules to give more control to the PLP and less to members; you cause thousands of members to leave, unions to unaffiliate and try to make up their contributions with corporate donations; you alienate (or make redundant) the grassroots activist campaigners and focus on being so unthreatening to established power that you'll get to use their media apparatus to sell your message.
At a certain point you cease being a democratic party for workers trying to mobilise against an unjust status quo and just become a more apologetic liberal polite version of the Tories. Then since we're under FPTP you go back to the pre-Trump American system where Labour play the role of the US Democrats as a different face of the same singular business party.
You could argue that's what the Labour party has always been, and to a certain extent I would agree. They've not really been a socialist party since 1951 and haven't been a social democratic party since 1976 (aside from a brief period under Corbyn). Nevertheless when we're facing the sort of incredible challenges that the world does today, the idea of the only viable alternative to perpetual Conservative rule being a more woke business party just isn't good enough for me.
100%
That is the real issue.
For any political party to be successful, it has to offer the majority of the voting public something that they want and can associate with, then motivate them to vote for that party.
Any political party that thinks that it knows better than the electorate and offers them little but dodma and out of date policies is only going to end up in one direction.
As I keep mentioning, Labour has to offer a modern vision that aligns with the wishes of the general public.
And if that is a left wing or center or variations of that policies, then so be it.
I don't fully agree, you can be a very successful party in opposition. And I think with the absolute destruction of the media as the 4th Estate, this is increasingly necessary. If Labour are not going to be a viable alternative to the Tories in terms of power then they should be a loud opposition voice for the Trade Unions and all the others outside the Tory tent.
Also I think some of the greatest and bravest statesmen went against the will of the general public, sometimes that's what leadership entails.
I can understand most of that. And traditionally that may well have been the case.
But I am not at all sure that any opposition party has much relevance with the general public nowadays.
We have and will continue to become a very binary society. And the longer that the Labour party is in opposition, the less relevant it will become.
I am not really interested in the Labour Party simply as a sideshow.